NATURAL AWAKENINGS

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Tuesday, April 25, 2006

We’ve all seen quotes taken out of context. We’ve seen people misrepresented for the sake of sensational copy and we’ve seen people painted according to someone’s understanding of them, or lack of understanding as the case may be. So, when I say, “I have been as much a hypocrite and a liar as any man under the wrong circumstances.” I could well see that quote come back to haunt me. It would not make it untrue, nor am I unduly ashamed of the fact. I have to be honest with myself, even if I am not always honest with you; whoever you are.

I can’t be honest with everyone. That’s neither safe nor sane. I’ve also said one thing and done another more than once in this life. The fact is though; if we are too hard on ourselves we can tend to be too hard on others as well. We need to cut ourselves and others more slack. Surely we know how hard it is to live up to an ideal. Is it any easier for anyone else?

I have hated myself because I was taught to hate myself. I came in here with all of the shortcomings common to the mortal state. My view of myself was responsible for my behavior. The fact that my view of myself was wrong caused me to be very erratic and unstable. How I managed to survive to the point where I am writing this is a virtual miracle. We blame so many things on God. This I feel I can blame on God without hesitation. No other power could have saved me from so many dangers and my own ignorant state.

I’ve said it before and I will continue to say it. I know there is a God. I am absolutely certain of it. But when our faith in ourselves is so conflicted, it serves that our faith in God will be shaky too. We don’t know who we are and we don’t know what we want. We get the results that condition brings.

The fact is that I am God. I am that portion of God’s substance formed to express and experience in a manner peculiar to me. We can all of us say, “I and my father are one.” We are seduced into aping the world in order to fit in. We develop all sorts of odd behavior in order to be understood and accepted by our fellows. We become liars and hypocrites. If we were not liars and hypocrites every man’s hand would be set against us. One of my favorite quotes from the Bible is; “Be ye wise as serpents and harmless as doves.”

God is the life that is living us. Any power that we have, our health, our ability to think and to feel comes from God. Blessings await us like planes circling an airport. We forbid them to land. Had we any idea of what was possible for us and what is held in trust for us we would run dancing and spinning down the street. This is why the dervishes do that. That is the act of a madman though. It just isn’t done. Oh, I’ve done it plenty of times and received the usual reactions. The police are here to see that you don’t make a nuisance of yourself. Laws are created to circumscribe human behavior. Telling the truth is sedition.

Nearly all of our laws and those who enforce them are servants of materialism. THINGS MATTER. Wealth goes to the head of the line. Temporal power and the vanity of the imaginary self rule from the despotic throne like a chimpanzee in royal garb. All the vast power of earthly hallucination is arrayed like a vast army against our pursuit of enlightenment. Up is down, back is forth, in is out and crazy is sane.

The God that is denied, the idea of a God that is rejected or labeled as myth never did exist. God can’t be comprehended. What is the point of rejecting something you don’t understand? Now that’s crazy. There’s me and God and there’s you and God. One displaces the other. If you are you then God is apart. If God is you then you are you no longer. It’s right there all the time, through the ages, inside of every moment. That subtle thing is always there, permeating everything, composing everything out of itself. The entire drama of existence has only one point and that is self-realization. You are either really you or you are a collection of fantasy projections based upon your desires and appetites. Everyone you see is giving you their version of it.

Some dress up in costumes. Some makes laws and some enforce them. Some perform on a smaller stage and we all perform on the larger stage. The sage is sleeping, curled up within us. Sometimes we feel that presence; mostly we go ‘our’ way. Every time we miss the target we are aiming at; which is the real definition of sin, a new set of circumstances are written into the script so that we can try again.

I look around me at this vast mental institution. I look at the people crunching numbers and buying and selling crap with no value to people with no taste. I see sleepwalkers moving around in a dream.

Fear is the biggie because fear displaces love. When you don’t know who you are then you don’t know what anything else really is either. Fear is a natural in that climate. If you can’t trust in what you can’t see you are doomed to believe in appearances that fall every day like leaves from a tree and which the wind sends dancing down the street, into the gutters and down into the drains. Appearances are not real. Everyone sees them differently.

We fear death but we are already dead. The body is a coffin. You wake up when you die. Some can die while they are yet in their body and enter into life everlasting while still resident in the flesh.

We have to let go of fear and the only way we can do that is through complete reliance upon the master helmsman. There is that great poster of Krishna and Arjuna in the chariot. It says it all. The body is your chariot and the horses are the senses. The reins are your mind. It’s all been said a long time ago. It’s always the same. There’s no new and improved truth that’s going to evolve out of the mix. Intelligence is not the end result of existence. It is the initiator. People don’t get smarter as they get older. It’s right there all the time.

I often think of our life and the trial, the cross that we bear as being like a man hanging on to the top of wall by his fingers. He can’t let go. Who knows how far he will fall? Yet when he does let go he finds that the ground was right below his feet.

A guest waits outside the door. You are the habitation. If you have cast him out in order to be the ruler then you have made yourself the slave of circumstance. If you step aside and let him in all of your concerns are at an end. It’s that simple and it waits in every moment. It’s waiting there right now. Through your whole life it is waiting. Through all of your lives it is waiting right at that point… waiting on you.

Please forgive me if I wandered all over the place with this, trying to circle ever tighter up upon the things that can't be said. I haven't done this in awhile. I haven't known what to say. I'm not sure what's coming is going to be an improvement but we will see as we go by.

Monday, April 03, 2006

Generally I remain in a conceptual mode here. It is my preference to deal with existence and the conditions of existence and consciousness as they occur essentially. What I mean is, rather than arguing about perspectives and perceptions, or how and why one might change outer circumstance… all of this really takes place within and then materializes around us. Those who guard the gateway of the mind will know what I am talking about.

Some could say, “Well, then- why is the world so messed up?” The greater collective of human thought concerns itself with these things and the world reflects it. Certain individual lives are at a remove from it- even while in motion through it.

I’m into things that work. If something doesn’t work I want to know why and I want to know how it might- or could- work another way. I’m also into expedience. This doesn’t mean I’m looking for the short route or that which requires the least effort. I’m not a fan of new age mumbo jumbo; what I consider McDonald’s/Starbuck’s spirituality. If there is an easier way- and I don’t think there is- the sheer volume of traffic upon it would make your way slower that the harder route. The confusion attendant would intensify the problems of judgment and so on and so on.

There are people now who teach Tantra. They hold out the mystery of increased sexual enjoyment and with that- an increase in sexual contact. Sexual attractiveness and contact are powerful validation points for the individual in this commercial world. If you are attractive to the opposite sex you have a currency, a value. These teachers want to show you how to, “pump up the volume” and make yourself a louder broadcast unit for your own presence here. As there are more and more people and less and less space it becomes increasingly more important for the individual to obtain a unique cachet. Tantra is the realm of Magic.

Sting likes to brag about how he can make love for 8 hours at a time because of his study of Tantra. This is something he manages to get done in between filming his Compaq and Jaguar commercials. I find him an interesting case in some ways. He is a very gifted songwriter and musician. Then there’s this other stuff. It appears that genius is not guarantor of Wisdom. Intelligence is no guarantor of Understanding. The irony of the whole thing is that Tantra will make it possible for you to make love 24 hours a day. It will make it possible for you to make love outside of time and therefore make the ultimate of 24 hours a day actually less total than it appears.

Well, this isn’t about Tantra but in a way it is. Tantra can’t be learned from just anyone. It is a marvelously complex thing in its entirety. Its technology rivals any of our complex empirical sciences. Very few people on this planet are in a position to teach it and very few people have the capacity to comprehend and practice it. It takes a very special sort of person and a very special sort of dedication. It is similar to those who master the practice of Ceremonial Magic or Alchemy. First of all these things are not on the beaten path and second, you really need to be a different sort.

Here is where I come to the matter of expediency and the easier way. There is an easier way. There is a more certain way. You can learn all of the elements of Tantra or anything else without having to go through the Confucian practice and memorization of minutiae.

To begin with, Tantra is about having sex with God. Certainly it can involve an opposite number. It might take any of uncountable possibilities of expression. In fact it does take an uncountable possibility of expressions all the time. Birds do it, bees do it and everything according to its nature does it- in the mortal expression of it round and round the Ferris wheel of time. It is not called Le Petit Morte by accident. However that practice which ensures our mortality is also the key to our immortality. And you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to master it.

If I am going to understand what it is that seems to surround me I can approach it two different ways. I can analyze everything I can perceive through my senses or I can comprehend that which manifested it. You might think in terms of inductive and deductive reasoning.

I know there is a God. This isn’t something I have faith in; something I hope may be true and that I- just might- discover after death somewhere. I don’t believe in being good in order to impress some anthropomorphic projection. Jim Morrison was right when he said, “You cannot petition the Lord with prayer.” Our understanding of the divine is flawed. So how are we supposed to contact and comprehend something that we have the wrong impression of? It’s like looking for New York City in some Mid-Western State.

If Tantra is somehow about making Love all the time; or loving everything all the time, or being filled with Love all the time, or understanding the intricate magical applications of breath and the exaltation of the physical into the realm of the divine through a myriad of increasingly complex operations then… you can learn all of the various permutations of it- if you’re smart enough and determined enough and in the company of the right teacher or… you can just love God all the time. Where a problem seems to arise is in the minds perception of difference. Then comes the minds disposition to preference and the idea that the seemingly beautiful is good and the seemingly ugly is evil. Now you get into the area where Tantra can be a problem as it turns back into the ‘same old same old’ with magic added.

This is how very simple people can achieve what highly intelligent people fail at. Anyone who puts their whole mind on loving God eventually comprehends the unity in everything. It may well be that you don’t need to know any of the things you think you need to know. Also, unless you know them exactly as they are, you know them wrong and so you don’t know them at all. So maybe it comes back to that ego thing of being better and more accomplished than others- having an edge. If it is about looking better by making others look worse, or by standing out as something more valuable in comparison to others of lesser value; by virtue of more accomplished PR; the advantage of money and cosmetics, better lighting… well, according to the world you might be more attractive and valuable than everyone else for as long as the plastic surgery and money hold out- as long as the breath lasts, but it is unlikely you have impressed God.

God knows everything exactly as it is. So if your mind is the same as God’s mind- and it happens that that is so- then you would know what God knows. Philosophers perform amazing feats of logic and argument. They are an impressive lot. They know all about everything without knowing anything at all. They speak at important events and receive awards. It seems that the whole world is filled with people who have mastered all sorts of things and who are also impressive and receive awards and hold high office and command armies and live well in the bargain. You could say they have mastered some elements of Tantra. They also die and are forgotten- or worse- die and are not forgotten.

It has been said that God forgives much in those who love much. Love is attractive. It draws the beloved near. Nothing impresses the beloved as much as genuine Love. The same holds true for God as it does for anything else. So you could learn a whole lot of things from someone and hope they know what they are talking about and that you are equal to the task or… you could just Love God all the time in everything that you encounter. You could pray for union without ceasing and let that prayer flow over the medium of your love or… what?

So maybe there is an easier way but it’s just not what is being offered as the easier way. Maybe it’s not ‘new and improved’. Maybe it’s not new and it can’t be improved.